Food waste in our country comes from a number of different sources: farms, grocery stores, homes, and more. At nearly every step of the process, the food industry contributes to the 40% of food wasted in our country each year.
A large chunk of food waste is because of us, the consumers. This could include food we buy in the store and never use, as well as food we purchase outside the home that gets thrown out because of fullness or a lack of means to transport leftovers.
Go outside any restaurant on a busy night, and the scene above is probably what you’ll see. (Seattle Times)
Restaurants have a large hand in the problem of food waste. Restaurants alone waste an estimated 571,000 tons of edible food. This equals an economic value of about $2,282 per ton of waste. A study in 2014 from the Business for Social Responsibility found that almost all of the food not served to customers, 85% of food in restaurants in America, is wasted, about 14% is recycled, and a little more than 1% is donated.
According to the Green Restaurant Association, the average restaurant produces 100,000 pounds of garbage per year, with 25,000 to 75,000 of this being food waste.
A senior analyst in the Environmental Protection Agency’s waste division has said that food waste is the number one material sent to landfills.
The restaurant industry includes several types of food service businesses: cafeteria operations, fast food, casual restaurants and fine dining establishments. Within each of these types, a different strategy for managing food waste is needed. Fast food is mostly consumed off property, so there is less waste produced than in a cafeteria, where everything is mostly consumed on site.
The restaurant industry seems to have an issue with food waste, as much of it ends up in the trash rather than being recycled or donated.
But restaurants do face obstacles when it comes to dealing with food waste. As far as donating food, there are a few challenges. Depending on the size of the company, these obstacles may be different, but the biggest factors are transportation constraints, insufficient storage or refrigeration, and liability concerns.
For recycling food waste, insufficient recycling options and transportation are the top obstacles.
Many restaurants are now recognizing the problem of food waste and have set a goal of achieving zero waste. You can read about a few of them on NPR.
But this problem can only be fixed if restaurant owners, chefs, cooks, and other employees actually begin to care about the problem.
But there are solutions to this problem— if people want to help fix it.
For restaurants, offering smaller portion sizes and appropriately sized to-go containers will reduce food waste by customers. Also, serving half portions of meals may reduce the amount not eaten or thrown away.
For those in the back of restaurants making the food, there are options as well. Having proper training on food waste may help, as well as finding ways to use the entire product rather than throwing away parts (such as using broccoli stems instead of discarding them).
Another issue is that of composting. I recently spoke with a chef at a small restaurant in Longmont, West Side Tavern. We were talking about the food waste at the restaurant, and what he does to combat it. The first way is to buy only what the restaurant needs and use all purchased items on the menu. The restaurant tries to buy as much locally as possible, and everything bought is used. They used to have a compost area outside, but the smell was too much for the business and neighboring homes, so the restaurant got rid of it.
Instead of getting rid of composting, there should be another option for them to deal with their food scraps/waste, rather than just throwing them away (which would produce a smell as well).
Not all restaurants have the opportunity to compost or recycle like others, but change can still be made if the community wants to go in that direction. Talking to local restaurateurs, owners, city council members, etc., to foster an open dialogue about the problem may be one way to make this a priority.
Certain communities have imposed fines on community members who don’t compost their food waste (read more here), and the same could be done for restaurants. Maybe imposing fines would give restaurants more incentive to actually care about the food they waste, instead of throwing it in the trash.
The National Restaurant Association developed a program to help restaurants with waste. The Conserve program partners with several businesses and research facilities to work together and reduce food waste.
Two legislative actions were also put in place to address food waste. The Federal Food Donation Act was enacted to encourage food donation. A revised version of the act was introduced this year to expand liability protections for food donors. The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 to protect donors from criminal liability.
Restaurant food waste is something we can all work on, but only if we all try to make a difference.
